In a fuel cell power plant using a hydrogen-rich gas generated by reforming gasoline or methanol by a reformer, it is necessary to promptly warm up the reformer when the power plant starts to operate.
Tokkai 2000-63104 published by the Japanese Patent Office in 2000 discloses a start-up combustor which promotes the warm-up of the reformer by providing a high temperature gas generated by combustion of fuel. The combustor uses glow plug to ignite fuel injected into a combustion chamber from a fuel injector and transfers the resultant combustion gas to the reformer so as to activate a reforming catalyst in the reformer.
Once the reforming catalyst is activated by the high temperature combustion gas, the reforming catalyst maintains an activation temperature with the heat of reactions resulting from reforming vaporized fuel. Consequently heating with the combustion gas is no longer necessary. When the reforming catalyst reaches an activation temperature, the start-up combustor stops fuel injection by the fuel injector.